


Asleep (or dead)

by Sulwen



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:51:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sulwen/pseuds/Sulwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard never leaves Mikey’s side. He shouldn’t be alone with the blood and the silence and the slowly rotting things in the upstairs bedrooms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asleep (or dead)

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for [Bandom Reverse Big Bang](http://bandomreversebb.livejournal.com/) and inspired by a truly beautiful mix of songs compiled by corvide. Make sure to go to the [mix post](http://corvide.livejournal.com/69147.html) and check it out!
> 
> My endless thanks to @silentdescant for being a wonderful beta and cheerleader, and to @girlphenom for saving me when I was completely stuck. Couldn't have done it without you!

Gerard dies in his bed when he is nineteen years old. He is only awake for a few moments in between passed-out drunk and passed-out forever, but it's enough, just enough to feel the blood pouring over his skin and soaking into his dirty sheets. _It doesn't hurt,_ he thinks, staring wide-eyed and frozen at the cracks in the ceiling. _It should hurt._ He can't get his eyes to focus, to make sense out of the shadowed form hovering over him, can't put the random manic sounds together into words. He forces his hand to move, to reach (Mikey, asleep in the next room, he has to warn Mikey), but it's too late. Everything slows, blood and breath and thought, and then he's under again, a smooth, inevitable slide away from the only existence he's ever known.

*

It's not like waking up, not even a little bit. It feels more like being drawn, _created,_ given form and function and existence by the hand of an invisible artist. His own hand, maybe, self-created and creating. He looks down the length of his arm without moving his head, somehow, and it's different than it's ever been before. Like...like he only has a hand because he expects to. Like if he had expected to see a tentacle or a hook or nothing at all, that's what would be there instead (should he try? Tentacles might be cool).

Except that his hand is still there, of _course_ it is, right there sprawled out lax on the bed, fingernails dirty and ragged, forking trails of blood just starting to dry on his pale skin. He tries to flex his fingers, but they don't move. In fact...he can't feel them at all. Not asleep, not pins-and-needles, but like the nerves have been cut. Connection severed. Please try your call again.

A small noise at the door echoes through the silence, and Gerard turns to look – still can't move, not even an eyeball, still can't feel anything, but he does it anyway, and fuck how it happens, because he can see just as clearly as ever. Can see Mikey hovering there in the doorway on swaying feet, staring in at him.

For one frozen moment, he just looks.

Watching his face when it hits him is like watching a car crash, fucking twenty-car pileup. Mikey stumbles into the room, tripping over clothes and books and bottles, and falls onto Gerard's low bed, half on top of him. He grabs frantically at Gerard's chest, his hands, his face, and Gerard wants to tell him to stop, that he's fine, that Mikey's gonna get blood all over his clothes and Mom's gonna be pissed...

_Mom._

Gerard looks toward the door again, but there's no one there. It's just Mikey. Mikey, who doesn't even have his fucking driver's license yet. Who's shaking and sobbing and saying things too fast and frantic for Gerard to understand, _begging._ Gerard looks at his face, trying to catch up, but it's like there's a tape delay, a few seconds between Mikey's lips moving and the sound coming through. Like Gerard's watching him from very far away. Maybe...maybe he is.

It's only after Mikey's gone quiet again that Gerard finally starts to put names to things, starts to work it out in his head. He can't feel anything, not his body, not Mikey's weight on him, not the beating of his heart or the blood under him (cooling now, must be). He can't hear himself breathing. He looks down. His chest is completely still. Silent.

Dead.

 _Dead,_ it's the only option, the only thing that sort of makes sense, and as soon as Gerard thinks of it, he knows that it must be the truth. He looks down at his hand again – but it's not his hand, it's his _body's_ hand, different now. It must be. He focuses hard on that separation, that distinction. His body's hand, sitting there dead on the sheets. _His_ hand, somewhere else, not under or inside but _else,_ imagines it shining and ephemeral like a ghost (absolutely right the moment he thinks of it, and he doesn't bother questioning). And for the first time, he tries to move that one, the ghost-hand...and for the first time, it works.

He stays there with his body until Mikey wipes the back of his hand across his wet face and gets up, because he doesn't want Mikey to be hugging an empty corpse – he wants Mikey to be hugging _him,_ even if he can't exactly feel it, and even if he can't tell Mikey he's here at all. He seems to have forgotten how to talk. Lost his voice, but not in the way that comes with a sore throat and a raspy whisper. _Lost._ Stolen. Gone.

Finally, Mikey gives him a look, red-eyed and shocked and with a terrifying air of finality, and turns to leave the room without a single glance back. It's then, only then, that Gerard finally feels the hurt he's been expecting ever since he woke up to a slit throat and an inevitably slowing heartbeat. He can't stay here. He can't leave Mikey alone. Can't let Mikey give up on him.

He stares down at his body again and _thinks._ Visualizes every part translucent and light and free of this heavy dead meat. Again, it feels like drawing. Drawing himself into the air, and it's not like standing, no mass for gravity to take hold of. When he finally manages it, he's hovering a few inches off the floor, more or less upright, looking down at the body he's left behind. The eyes are open, and Gerard reaches out without thinking (they should be closed, his eyes should be closed). But his fingers pass right through, down through his face and into where his brain must be. Just gray mush, now. He wonders if that's where he came from, just the echoes of electrical signals flying around from nerve to nerve. Wonders how long he'll last. How this _works._

He pulls his hand back. He never would have thought he'd be wishing death came with an instruction manual.

_Mikey..._

There are bloody footprints on the floor in the hallway. Mikey's, and under his, bigger prints. Boots. Drips and drops of rusty red, scattering from fresh-soaked hands. A moment of red-hot anger flares up somewhere inside Gerard (does he have an inside anymore?) and then it's gone, slipping away from him as easily as it came. Nothing to hold onto. Nowhere to fester. He glances down the hall toward his mother's room instead. The door is open, and part of him wants to go see, but he knows all he needs to from the look on Mikey's face, from the still silence of the house. He knows. She's gone. Maybe just electrical signals like him, or maybe just...gone. He swallows (imagines swallowing, and that's close enough). Downstairs. Follow. Follow.

He's still Mikey's older brother. Even like this. Even dead.

*

Mikey doesn't leave the house for three days.

He doesn't talk, doesn't sleep, doesn't eat. He sits down in a kitchen chair and stares, and Gerard watches him, and worries. He never leaves Mikey's side. He shouldn’t be alone with the blood and the silence and the slowly rotting things in the upstairs bedrooms. It's August, and hot, and it doesn't matter that he can't smell things anymore – by the end of the third day, he knows it must be getting noticeable (getting _bad,_ fucking disgusting, and he's starting to regret how much he knows about what happens to bodies after they're dead). Mikey never lets on, not so much as a touch to his nose. He needs help. He needs _someone._

Gerard's tried everything he can think of to get through to him, to make any sort of contact. He tries talking and screaming and pounding on the floor. Focuses on the lights to get them to flicker. Hovers in front of mirrors, looking for a reflection. He even tries reaching into Mikey himself (cold would be something, at least, a shiver, a _reaction_ )...but there's nothing. Parallel lines, so close but never touching. Parallel worlds. Gerard starts to think of Mikey's world as the real world and his own as the spirit world, even though that's not right at all. This is as real as anything. He's living it.

For the first time, Gerard finds himself wishing that their family had tried harder to be more friendly, be more a part of the world, because it's been three fucking days and no one's come looking for them. They shouldn't have been so isolated. _He_ shouldn't have been so isolated. Gotten a job. Said hi to a neighbor. Made a friend.

On the fourth day, there's a knock on the door, and for the first time since he died, Gerard _feels_ something. He feels the contact, each knock in quick succession, and it goes all through him like the house is his body, the walls his bones. He shakes off the surprise of it and fixes his attention on Mikey, Mikey who's still unmoving, as if he can't hear it at all. Gerard puts his face an inch from Mikey's, stares into his eyes, willing him to come back from wherever he's gone and answer the fucking door. He has to let whoever it is in, let himself be helped. Gerard's had a lot of time to think over the past three days. He doesn't know if Mikey would really sit here long enough to let himself die. He doesn't want to find out.

The knocking becomes banging and the calls become shouting, and finally, _finally,_ Mikey blinks and shakes himself a little and stands up on shaking feet.

Frank (Mikey's friend, younger, maybe, and always shockingly tiny) throws himself inside and tackles Mikey in a violent hug and starts talking a mile a minute, asking Mikey why he hasn't been at school and why the fuck he didn't make the show the other night and why he took so long to open the door. Gerard watches his face and waits. It doesn't take long.

Frank wrinkles his nose and stares over Mikey's shoulder into the house. “Dude,” he asks. “What died in here?”

A moment passes in frozen silence. Gerard waits.

Mikey bursts out laughing, his eyes wide and his teeth bared, laughing so hard he can't breathe. He clutches his middle and hunches over into himself, manic peals of laughter pouring out of him like bitter bile, and Gerard wishes he could cry.

Frank is staring at Mikey for real now, taking in the bloodstains on his clothes, under his fingernails. How pale his face is, and the gaunt hollows of his cheeks. The way his laughter is not really laughter at all. Gerard can see exactly when the pieces all come together, and he knows Frank's got it right even before he asks what the _fuck_ happened here.

Mikey's laughter trails off, and he says (lips still not quite matching the words, and in a voice Gerard hardly recognizes), “They're upstairs. They can't come down right now.”

Frank opens his mouth. Glances toward the stairs. Closes it again.

Then he says, “Fuck, Mikey...come on, we have to get outta here. I can't...you can't stay here, come on.”

Mikey looks back toward the stairs doubtfully. “Well...I don't want to leave them alone,” he says, and Gerard wants to _scream_ at him then, because those things are nothing, just rotting flesh. He's here, right here with Mikey, and he's gonna follow wherever Mikey goes, no matter what. He needs Mikey to go with Frank, out there into the world where _someone_ will make him eat and drink and (oh please) give him something to knock him out for a while. Let him forget for a fucking second, any way he can.

Frank grabs Mikey by the arm and starts pulling him toward the door, and Mikey goes, lets himself be led, and Gerard follows.

Well.

Gerard _tries_ to follow, and he makes it to the doorframe without a problem. But as soon as he tries to move beyond the walls of the house, it's like...not even like a fence, or a wall, or even a force field. It's more like the world just _ends_ where the house does. Frank and Mikey are already disappearing around the corner, and Gerard has no fucking idea where Frank lives, and holy shit, what if they never come back, what if Gerard never gets to see his little brother again? He struggles wildly against the boundary, but the more he tries, the deeper he seems to sink, the essence of him falling further into the house, struts and rafters and dirty fucking carpet.

He realizes, finally, when he can no longer make himself keep trying, that he might be trapped here. Maybe that's how it works (how the fuck should he know?), ghosts unable to leave the houses where they died. He thinks quickly about what it would be like if Mikey never came back, stuck in what used to be their house, now with strangers living in it, silent and watching and horribly separate from the one person left in the world he still cares about. Maybe _forever._

And, for the first time since he died, Gerard is afraid.

*

Gerard doesn't realize the connection he has with Mikey until he's gone.

It's weak, but if Gerard goes very still and focuses very hard, he can feel Mikey's presence, faint but _there._ Sometimes he can even tell what Mikey's doing. Mostly sleeping, as far as Gerard can tell. That's good. Sleep is good.

He doesn't sleep, himself (ghosts don't sleep, he guesses – he never gets tired, anyway). Instead, he sets himself to trying to break the hold the house has on him. He has all the time in the world, and nothing else to do but try.

But something strange is happening, now that Mikey's not here anymore. One minute it will be light outside, hot summer sun streaming in through the windows – and the next, the clock on the stove reads midnight, and the house is filled with darkness. Gerard is no stranger to losing time (thanks very much to his good friends Jack and Jim), but this isn't like passing out. It's more like a blink, a _skip_ – a needle jumping the record.

When he realizes what's happening (detaching from the fabric of the world, slipping away, and what if he misses _Mikey_ coming back), the panic is almost overwhelming. It's far, far more terrifying than actually dying was. Dying was just a change, just...changing. This feels like _disappearing._ That can't happen. He can't let it.

He gives up trying to get out of the house and instead focuses on digging in, trying to hang on, _exist_ for every single second, in the right order, the way time is supposed to be. But it's hard, without Mikey, so fucking hard to grasp onto each empty second and hour and day. At some point there are people in the house, but they're not-Mikey people, so Gerard doesn't really care. He misses a lot, no matter how hard he tries.

Eventually, a completely unknown amount of time later (though the bodies are gone and the blood is cleaned up, Gerard remembers that), Mikey and Frank come back, driven by a woman Gerard doesn't recognize. She waits in the car, and Gerard immediately likes her a little for that. He doesn't want other people in their house, people who don't belong.

Frank, for some reason, feels okay.

Gerard waits at the door and watches them come up the driveway. Mikey looks...his face is still too thin and the bags under his eyes too heavy, but he looks a thousand times better than he had the last time Gerard saw him. He's getting along. He's _living._

The second they cross the threshold, Gerard throws himself at Mikey, lets himself forget for just a split second that they can't touch. For a split second, it works. Then he's passing through, and he remembers where he is now, _what_ he is. What he can no longer do.

But Mikey's here, and it's okay, it's all okay again. They're together, and Mikey won't leave again, and Gerard will stop losing his grip on time. Mikey's his connection to the real world, his anchor. He'll be all right now.

Mikey and Frank go up the stairs into Mikey's room, and Frank starts rooting around in the closet. Gerard doesn't pay much attention. He hasn't had anyone to listen to in so long (it feels like so long), and he seems to have lost the trick of it a little bit, catching the sounds of their words and making sense out of them. He watches instead, watches Mikey sit down on the bed and put his hands palms-down on the blankets, rubbing back and forth slowly and staring into the middle distance. His hair is a mess, and his lips look painfully dry, and he's wearing a shirt Gerard doesn't recognize (one of Frank's, must be). He's the most perfect thing Gerard has ever seen.

It takes Gerard a while to turn his attention to Frank, and what Frank's _doing._ The suitcase he's pulled out of the closet. The clothes and shoes and CDs he's pulling out of drawers and piling inside it. He's...they're... _packing._ Shoving Mikey's whole life in a bag and taking him away, where Gerard can't follow.

It should hurt. It _does_ fucking hurt, but only underneath the numbness. He knew this was coming, of course he did. Mikey's sixteen, and there's no family. Only option, really. It doesn't make it any easier to watch as the seconds slip away.

Frank finishes packing and plops down on the top of the suitcase to get it to zip shut. Then he looks up at Mikey and says something, eyebrows raised in a question. Gerard shakes himself and realigns his focus on Mikey, not wanting to miss his reply, even though he doesn't know the question. But Mikey doesn't say a word. Instead, he pauses for a long, long moment. Then he stands and goes out into the hallway. One door down. Gerard's room.

Gerard hasn't really been back into his room (or his mom's, for that matter), ever since it happened. There's a strange feeling in there, and he's not sure if that's because it's where he died, or because it's where he _lived._ Either way...it's enough to make him avoid the place.

Mikey doesn't seem happy to be here, either. He hesitates at the door for just a moment, takes a deep breath. Then he goes in and stands in the center of the room with his eyes closed. His face is blank, but Gerard knows better. Mikey has bored-blank and annoyed-blank and happy-blank. This one...this is carefully-blank, which means it's covering up something underneath. He's holding himself together. Barely.

“Do you...” and that's Frank's voice, tinny and a little broken, like it's coming through a bad radio signal. “Do you wanna take any of his stuff? There's not room for everything, but you could...um...”

The silence stretches so long Gerard wonders if Mikey's even heard. Then, finally, he opens his eyes and goes directly to Gerard's desk. His sketchpad is laying open, a messy half-finished pencil drawing of a zombie mushroom on the page. Gerard winces. The zombie mushroom is pretty cool, but if he'd known it was gonna be his last...well, he would have tried a little harder with the shading at least.

Mikey picks up the sketchpad and looks down at the mushroom's uneven teeth. His fingers clench, crumpling the paper where he holds it, and his eyes go tight, and his voice shakes when he speaks.

_“Gee...”_

The tears start flowing then, and Frank presses himself up against Mikey's side, offering silent comfort. Gerard takes the other side, and wishes for the millionth time that he could talk to Mikey, just _once,_ just to let him know that he's okay. That Mikey shouldn't waste a single tear over him. But the space between them is just as impassable as always, and Mikey cries for what feels like forever, until his face is wet and shining and the open page of the sketchbook is dotted with quickly drying spots. Mikey brushes at them with trembling fingers, cursing when he smudges the drawing. Gerard shakes his head, willing Mikey not to worry about it. It looks better smudged. Way better.

They go to leave, then, and Gerard knows that this time, it's for good. If he lets Mikey walk out that door and away from him again, he might as well just give up his grip on the world altogether. No point in hanging around just to watch days turn into weeks and months and years, not without someone to watch over, to connect with. Better to just...let go.

He throws himself at Mikey, trying to cling with no arms, trying to climb _inside_ him – anything to get out of this place that's no longer his home. When they reach the door, Gerard finds the same resistance as always, the same wall of nothingness that's blocked his path every time he's tried to escape before. He hurls himself against it frantically, _furiously,_ wishing it would push back or hurt or _something,_ just to let him know he's even making contact. But they're passing through, two steps that mean everything, and Gerard's still here, still left behind, and he's not screaming but he feels like it, not fucking _fair,_ not _right..._

Mikey hesitates. Cocks his head, like he's heard something. Waits.

It's only a span of seconds, but it's enough. Just enough for Gerard to sense a crack in the door. Something glowing, like a spark. Like a _path._

He doesn't think, doesn't hesitate, just dives for the opening and rides out the overwhelming vertigo that comes with it. The world is spinning and streaming by and...bouncing? He doesn't understand. It doesn't matter. He's no longer in the house, and Mikey's right there next to him, close by like he always should be. Everything else is just details.

There's one last jolt, and then relative stillness. Gerard opens his eyes (ghost-eyes, whatever ghosts have for eyes, and he wishes he had a reflection so he could see what they look like).

The first thing he sees is a smudged zombie mushroom.

His sketchbook, of course it is, laying on top of Mikey's suitcase, and now that he sees it it's obvious. He senses it the same way he had the house, not a _body,_ really, but close. Pages for the bulk and ink and watercolor for the details, and Gerard sighs and relaxes and settles in. This, Mikey will keep with him. This, he can do.

There's a sense of motion again, and he understands vaguely that they're driving. It's the easiest thing in the world to let himself be carried along, and it's the closest thing to pleasure he's felt in this...whatever it is. Afterlife. He's part of the _world_ again, everything open and free and moving, full of possibilities. Maybe there are even other ghosts, somewhere. Watching over Mikey is his whole world, is everything...but he hadn't realized how much he would miss having someone to talk to, or even just being _seen._ The loneliness is bearable for now, but...maybe not forever.

He pushes the thoughts away. He's _out,_ and he's with Mikey, and there could be other ghosts around, sure there could. Anything's possible.

The sketchbook and Gerard end up in what is obviously Frank's bedroom, posters lining the walls and CDs stacked everywhere and a guitar case leaning in the corner. He worries, a little, that he'll sink into the house the way he had the last one, but he seems secure enough in the sketchbook for now. He experiments, and finds that he can get a good forty or fifty feet away from the book before running up against the barrier again. It's not freedom, really, but it feels like it. At least he's mobile. He doesn't think he could handle the rest of eternity trapped in a hundred mostly-full pages of his own inferior work.

Frank brings Mikey's suitcase into the room for him, hauling it into a corner and then coming to sit on the bed. Mikey sits next to him, and Frank nudges him with one shoulder.

“See?” Frank says, false lightness in his voice. “We did it. Not so bad.”

Mikey doesn't answer.

“You can unpack if you want, but the movers are coming the day after tomorrow. Probably not really worth it.”

Mikey looks at the floor.

“I know, it fucking sucks, right? Leaving here, leaving _Jersey,_ man, the whole scene, it's not fair. And y'know, I really didn't even mind Fred so much until he got a job in fucking _West Virginia._ West Virginia, bet they don't even _have_ a scene. Thanks a lot, Mom. My life is _over.”_

A moment passes. Then Frank winces and apologizes, his voice subdued. Mikey just nods, almost imperceptibly, and turns his face away. Gerard's heart breaks, and he reaches out to ruffle Mikey's hair, pull him in for a hug, going through the motions (it's the thought that counts, right? Right).

“Maybe it'll be better, you know?” Frank says hopefully. “Somewhere different. Without all the...memories.”

Mikey hums under his breath, and Gerard knows exactly what he's thinking, because he would think just the same thing if it was him.

He would want to remember.

*

The house is _old._

Older than anything left in the entire state of Jersey, Gerard thinks (at least, it looks like it). It's three stories of creaking wood and cracked graying paint, too big for four people and too isolated for two teenagers, way out here in the middle of the woods. The trees are tall and thick, looming over the house and swaying ominously in the wind, and the yard is an overgrown mess. It looks abandoned. It looks _haunted_ (and Gerard can't help but be amused at that. If it isn't yet, it's about to be).

Mikey carries Gerard's sketchbook tight under his arm as he follows Frank up the porch stairs and through the front door, and it's okay, it's all fine, until it's really really _not._

It feels... _rotten._ Sour like spoiled milk, the spongy disgusting wetness of food so old it's starting to liquefy into greenish-brown muck. Gerard recoils and digs in at the doorframe, panic rising too fast to stop. He doesn't want to go in there. Mikey _definitely_ shouldn't be in there, breathing in that bitterness. But as Frank and Mikey move further into the house, Gerard reaches his limit, and it doesn't matter what he wants – he's pulled along behind the movement of the sketchbook, right into the stinking mass of whatever is lurking here. He holds the breath he doesn't have and fixes his attention on Mikey, trying to take in as little as possible of the rest of the place. Surely they'll realize – surely they won't _stay_ here. No one could be so blind.

And yet.

Gerard comes to know every inch of the place, every quirk of it. He knows where the floorboards creak. Knows the pattern of the curtains as they flutter, long and white in a breeze that's not there. Watches the rats as they run out their little lives in the walls, run-hunt-hide until they're nothing but fragile little corpses rotting away into skeletons, nothing but a skitter and a stink and a silence.

There is a piano in what's optimistically called the sunroom, though the glass in the windows is too warped and darkened to let in much more than a dim haze. It came part and parcel with the house, a part of it, just like the bricks and rafters. Maybe more. Frank presses every key on the first day and pronounces it too out of tune to be any good to anyone. Gerard's not much of a musician, but he winces and has to agree.

Mikey plays it sometimes. He can't really play properly, but he'll sit sometimes, late at night, and lay his long fingers across the keys, and make them sound their discordant notes, too soft to wake the others asleep upstairs. Gerard watches him, and does his best to remember the not-melodies, and puts words to them while he watches Mikey sleep. None of them are very good, but it doesn't matter. No one will ever hear them.

No one in the family likes this place. Fred the Stepdad thinks of it as a necessary sacrifice – he has to be close to the factory he's running, and Frank's mom forces herself to agree. Frank himself rails against it at every moment, plotting and pleading with his parents to let him stay out later and later, with this friend or that. Gerard knows that none of the names Frank drops actually exist. He also knows that Frank would rather sit alone with Mikey out behind the school cafeteria and kick rocks back and forth than spend one extra second in this house. Smart fucking kid.

And Mikey...Mikey is as unhappy as Gerard has ever seen him. He carries Gerard's sketchbook in the messenger bag that's constantly over his shoulder, and so Gerard follows him from class to class, counting the words he speaks just for something to do. It's rarely more than a dozen, and those only come at the prompting of teachers or principals, people who can't be ignored. For the most part, Mikey is silent, and Gerard only knows the depth of his misery by the way it's written on his face (the first book Gerard learned to read, and still his favorite).

He wants more than anything to be able to contact Mikey, comfort him, talk to him and hold him and pull him up out of this depression – but if he's honest with himself, he has to admit that since he can't be there for Mikey himself, Frank is pretty much the next best thing. Frank never minds Mikey's silence, more than able to carry on a conversation all by himself, for hours at a time with hardly a pause for breath. And it's not just meaningless rambling, either. Gerard starts listening, and once he starts, he can't stop.

He's never paid that much attention to his little brother's friends before, but Frank...Frank is different. Frank has completely impeccable taste in music, and close-held dreams of turning his skin into a work of art, and all these _opinions_ on things, things that really matter, like which Star Wars is the best and whether using the warp tunnels in Mario is considered cheating. He's always giving Mikey recommendations for things, books and albums and movies, and Mikey listens to him.

And the way Frank talks about live music...Gerard can see the stars in Mikey's eyes, and knows that they would be reflected in his own if he was really here, really sitting next to them on the rusty playground swings, cutting lines in the dirt with their feet. Frank talks about grungy, crowded, third-rate club shows like they're his _religion._ He talks about the press of the crowd, the violence that isn't, the energy hurled out by the band and thrown right back at them by the fanatical onlookers. He talks about the pounding of the drums and the too-loud whine of the guitars and the incomprehensible _screaming_ of the singers, a sermon of sound and passion rather than words. And eventually, the love in his eyes turns to grief, and Mikey stands up and grabs the chains of Frank's swing to bring it to a standstill and wraps him up in his arms while Frank shudders. Gerard's not sure if it's sadness or anger that makes him tremble like that, but when Mikey pulls away, Frank's eyes are red, and there are wet spots on Mikey's hoodie.

Gerard wishes he was alive all the time, every time he looks at Mikey's thin shoulders and narrow, closed mouth. But when he looks at Frank, he feels...it's more than that, like he's been _cheated,_ almost. Because he can see something there. The seed of a thing. Something special, maybe, even though Frank is fifteen and a total spaz sometimes and his little brother's friend.

It doesn't matter now. They'll never know.

So things go along, and sometimes Gerard loses time but mostly not, following Mikey and Frank through their lives and worrying vaguely about the house, the spoiled rotten thing there, what it might _do._ He hopes it will just stay dormant like it has been so far, just leave them alone, keep to itself.

And then the lights start to flicker. Doors slam. Things start to go missing, only to turn up in places they shouldn't be – socks in the freezer. A rug draped over the TV. A kitchen knife under Mikey's pillow.

Frank's parents think it's the boys acting out. Gerard sees everything and knows better. And for the first time, he knows that it _is_ possible to touch the world, the real world. If the spirit haunting this house can do it, so can he. He _has_ to, because he can feel it, feel the thing getting stronger and closer and _angrier,_ and if it could put a knife under Mikey's pillow it could put it in his heart.

*

It happens for the first time at the piano. Mikey spends hours that night plinking away, a note here and a note there, thinking his thoughts until he's exhausted enough to sleep. Gerard watches him trudge up to bed – step, step, squeak, step, step, step, squeak – and then moves to take his place at the keys. He's been trying for what he thinks is weeks now, focusing all his energy on one point, on the tip of his right index finger, trying to make it strong and solid. He moves it very slowly, trying to keep his focus, trying to _press_ (come on come on come on)...and then, like every time before, it slides silently right through the key. He shakes his head and gathers his focus and tries again. Again. Again.

The twangy out-of-tune C, when it comes, is the most beautiful sound Gerard has ever heard.

He does get better at it, slowly. He can make the notes on the piano sound and the curtains sway – even a glass break, during one memorable experiment in the kitchen. It's the best he's felt since he became a ghost, the most solid, the most real. Finally, he's not stuck just _watching._ Not helpless any more.

Except there's a problem (of course, of course there would be a problem). The first time Gerard makes the key on the piano move, he loses two hours. He hardly notices the skip. It's still night. Everyone's still asleep. It doesn't matter.

After the hour he spends making the curtains move gently back and forth, he loses twelve hours, gone in a flash, night to day in one dizzying blink.

When he hits the glass with enough force to send it shattering to the floor, he skips two days. When time starts running again, he feels weak, _faint,_ almost (used up, that's exactly what it is, toothpaste being squeezed out of the tube, and what happens when it's gone?). He resolves then and there to save those little moments of contact for when it really counts. When he _needs_ it.

More than anything, he wants to leave a message for Mikey...but now that he actually has the ability, he can't think of a good way to do it, something that would make Mikey understand, make him _believe._

He's still thinking on the night of the attack.

It happens so quickly he doesn't even have time to think – he just _reacts._ Frank is walking toward the stairs, looking over his shoulder, calling something back to Mikey as he goes. The box has been sitting in the upstairs hallway ever since they moved in, full of old photo albums that no one's bothered to unpack. Gerard watches in horror as it slides itself across the floor and right into Frank's path, and Frank's still not looking, and the stairs are steep and sharp and deadly, and Gerard just _moves,_ shoves his entire being into Frank's body and knocks him, sprawling, to the floor. It's the biggest thing Gerard's managed since he started trying, and it comes with side effects he doesn't expect – the floor shakes, and the lightbulb in the ceiling actually _explodes,_ scattering glass everywhere, and there's a sound like a shriek, high and piercing and unnatural, like nothing Gerard's ever heard before (or wants to again, fuck, that thing is terrifying).

He can feel himself starting to fade already, but then he catches a glimpse of Mikey's face, the stricken look there, and most of all _where_ he's looking. He focuses his energy again, just trying to hang on. He'll pay for this, skip further, fade more, but he's not ready for it to happen just yet. This is _important._ He needs to see.

Frank is sputtering on the floor, cursing and flailing his arms around, looking for the thing that pushed him and finding nothing. But Mikey's not looking at Frank. Mikey's staring at the box, the innocent old box of photo albums sitting menacingly at the top of the stairs.

“Did you...” Mikey starts. He stops and pushes his glasses up on his nose. “I thought I saw something.”

Frank clambers to his feet and follows Mikey's gaze. Sees the box for the first time. “Holy shit...” he breathes. “I almost...”

“Like something...I dunno. It was black. It looked...weird. Like kind of clear? But it's gone now.”

And then Gerard can't hang on anymore, drifting away from the scene like the fadeout at the end of a movie. His thoughts are already flying the second he comes back (he saw it, Mikey fucking _saw_ it), and maybe, maybe...he has the beginning of an idea.

*

He works on the drawing just the tiniest bit at a time – a line here, a shade there, slow enough that it hardly fades him at all – and wills Mikey and Frank to be careful, just hang on until he's done. The malevolent spirit in the house seems to be weakened in much the same way Gerard is after reaching across the boundaries, and the following weeks pass quietly, but it doesn't stop him worrying. One skip at the wrong time, and Mikey and Frank would be left defenseless – how could they possibly fight back against whatever that _thing_ is, ghost or spirit or demon? How could they even start?

But things are thankfully quiet until Gerard finishes, until the night when Gerard flips the sketchbook open to the last page and moves it slowly across the room, setting it down gently next to Mikey's sleeping form.

He's timed it out just right, coming out of the time loss just as Mikey's stirring awake. Mikey blinks. Rolls over. Hears the crumpling of the sketchbook under his shoulder. He pauses for one second, staring, then lunges for his glasses and stares again.

Frank starts punching the air when Mikey shakes him awake, almost catching Mikey right in the face. Mikey grabs his hands and leans down too close, talking desperately.

“Frank, seriously, wake up. This is fuckin' crazy, man, come on, I need you to look at this and tell me I'm not crazy,” Mikey says, all in a rush. It's the most animated, the most _alive_ his voice has sounded since the move. Since the murders. Maybe even since _before_ that, back when life was normal and boring and ghosts were just special effects in horror movies.

Frank must hear the difference, too, because he stops flailing and rubs his fingers into his eyes and throws off his blankets without one more moment of hesitation. “What the fuck, Mikeyway? You know it's Saturday, right?” he groans, but there's no venom in it.

“Did you draw this?” Mikey asks, thrusting the sketchbook into Frank's face.

Frank blinks and moves the sketchbook back a few inches, focusing. Then he looks back at Mikey. “No. I would never draw in Gerard's book, you know that. And besides, I can't draw for shit. If I tried to draw you, you would be a really skinny stick figure with glasses.”

Gerard wishes he was part of this conversation, so he could point out that all stick figures are pretty much the same amount of skinny. Mikey answers instead, shaking his head.

“Frank, don't you get it? Look!”

Frank looks again, and Gerard looks over his shoulder at the drawing of Mikey's sleeping figure. Gerard is there, too, hovering over him in faint, indistinct lines, only clear in the features of his face. Beneath the drawing, just for good measure, is the date. Gerard had gone to specific trouble to make sure he'd gotten it right. He had to make it perfect. He had to make Mikey _understand._

“Frank, it's a _message._ Gerard...he's...he's _here_ somehow, he's trying to contact me. He might even be in this room right now.” Mikey cuts himself off and stares slowly around the room, looking. His eyes pass right over Gerard without pausing, like every other time. Gerard can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment. There's no reason it should have been different, but...still. Maybe he's been hoping.

Frank raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Mikey...you know how that sounds, right? I mean, I'm not saying...just that, are you sure that drawing wasn't already in there? And maybe he just, I don't know, put the wrong date?”

“I know every page of this book. Every one. I could list every single drawing to you – in order – with my fucking eyes closed. Frank, I'm telling you, this one is _new.”_

Mikey falls heavily back on his own bed, cradling the sketchbook in his hands like it's something sacred, and whispers to himself almost too quiet to hear. “I knew it. I knew it, Gee.”

Frank hesitates, just for a moment, and then he follows, sitting next to Mikey and looking down at the drawing. “You didn't say anything to me,” he says softly.

“I thought they were just dreams, even though...I have them almost every night. Always the same,” Mikey says, his voice shaking. “I dream that he's still with me, watching. Like...I don't know, like a guardian angel or something.”

“Your brother?” Frank snorts. “An angel?”

Gerard bristles a little at that (little douchebag, never even knew him), but Mikey laughs, and it's infectious, catching Gerard up in the lightness of it. “It sounds crazy, I know. But I've never had dreams like that before, and now this...” Mikey runs his fingers carefully over the drawing. “I don't see how else this could have happened. This is his style. This is _him._ Somehow.”

Then Frank's mom is calling them for breakfast, and Gerard loses himself in his thoughts. Dreams. Mikey's been _dreaming_ of him, and not just the remembering sort of dream, either. What he'd described...it's what's real, Gerard hovering over his shoulder, watching out for him. And maybe it's coincidence and maybe it's nothing, but...maybe it's something else, something Gerard can use.

That night, Gerard hovers by the bed as Mikey crawls under the covers to go to sleep. Frank is already snoring in the other bed when Mikey takes off his glasses and closes his eyes and whispers, for the first time, “Goodnight, Gee.”

Any doubt Gerard might have had about trying this disappears with those words. So what if it's too much, too far to push? He doesn't care if it throws him out of time forever, fades him out of the world like so much breath on glass. It'll be worth it, just for one more chance to talk to Mikey, to tell him he loves him one more time. To say hello...and goodbye.

He doesn't know what to do, not really, just a vague idea in the back of his mind about dreams and two worlds and closeness, getting close enough to touch...but it doesn't seem to matter, because the moment he reaches, he's blinking again, slipping right out of time and into somewhere _else._

This time, though...this time is different. It's not like fading, not like _losing_ anything. It's not like anything Gerard has ever felt. He looks around at the empty shifting ether, then down at himself, at the body that's _present_ in a way it hasn't been in months now. He doesn't look translucent or blue-tinged or ghostly at all, all the vague details filled back in, right down to the cigarette stains on his fingers and the greasy strands of hair brushing against his jaw. He feels too tall, too thin, too _much,_ somehow, and suddenly it hits him – this is Mikey's dream. This is how _Mikey_ sees him. Saw him. Whatever.

He looks around again. If this is Mikey's dream, Mikey should be here, right? Isn't that how it works? Gerard spins in a slow circle, peering into the indistinct distance, wondering if he's meant to be moving, searching, or if he should just wait.

“Hi, Gee.”

The voice comes from behind him, and Gerard spins around to see Mikey sitting on the...well, sitting, anyway, crosslegged with his head bowed, picking at his nails. His hair is a hopelessly tangled mess, and his glasses are about to fall off the end of his nose. The sole of one shoe is starting to come loose, gaping at the toe. Gerard can see just a glimpse of Mikey's white-socked toes inside. Everything inside him goes very tight, an explosion in reverse. For a moment, he can't even move.

Then he's tripping over his own feet, going to his knees and throwing his arms around Mikey and shaking hard, clutching at him so tight it must hurt. Would hurt. If this were real.

He's babbling, he thinks, too muffled in Mikey's shoulder to be understood, but he can't stop, _has_ to let it out somehow, and Mikey lets him. Finally, after he's gone mostly still again, Mikey pushes him back gently and looks into his face, brows knit in confusion.

“This isn't my dream,” he says, like it's the most normal observation in the world.

Gerard shakes his head. “No, Mikes. It's me, I'm really here. I'm...” He hesitates. How can he even begin to explain? He meets Mikey's eyes and does what he always does when he's not sure how to correctly get what's in his brain into someone else's – he throws all the words he can think of at it and hopes they add up to something that sticks.

Mikey listens quietly. Then, when Gerard's run out of words, he cocks his head and says, “So you're a ghost.”

Gerard suppresses a ridiculous grin. His brother, man. He really fucking loves his brother. “I guess so. I mean, that's what it seems like, right?”

“Yeah.” Mikey glances up, and he's smiling now, a tiny little quirk of his lips that goes all the way to his eyes. The real one. “I knew you wouldn't leave me alone.”

Gerard settles across from Mikey and reaches out to take both his hands. It's easy, here in the dream, no effort at all. _“Never.”_

“Why didn't you tell me sooner, though? The drawing...” Mikey trails off.

“I couldn't. I tried, I swear to god I did, but I don't...I don't think I'm supposed to. It's like I don't really exist any more, and when I try to touch things that do...that's when I slip.” Gerard looks down and steels himself. He doesn't want to talk about this, but Mikey has to know. Just in case.

“What...slip?”

“It takes a lot out of me, Mikey, every time I try to touch something, something real. The drawing I left you? That took _weeks._ At least. I'm not so good of keeping track anymore.” Mikey opens his mouth to reply, but Gerard speaks over him. “Just...let me finish, okay? I...when I do something, it's like there's a cost, or a punishment, maybe. I disappear for a while. Sometimes a long time. And when I come back, it's like no time has passed at all for me, but the rest of the world...you included...has just gone on without me. And I'm afraid that...if I try to do too much, I'll just disappear forever. I just won't come back.”

For a long minute, there's no response. Gerard forces himself to look up again and meet Mikey's eyes, eyes that are wide and staring and, at the heart of them, afraid.

Reassurance comes easy to his lips, hurried and sounding like the half-truth it is. “But even if that happens, it's okay! You'll be okay. You have Frank, right, and Frank's _awesome.”_

Mikey laughs a little despite himself. “Frank's a douchebag,” he says.

Gerard grins. “Yeah. But he's the best kind.”

“But...Gee, can't you just...you don't have to, you know, touch things. Can't you just watch? Just be here? I don't need you to make drawings for me, now that I know. I just wanna know that you're _here.”_

“It's not that simple.”

“Why _not?”_ Mikey's voice goes a little bit whiny, and suddenly he looks very, very young. Gerard squeezes his hands a little tighter.

“Because,” he says, “I'm not the only ghost in this house.”

Mikey catches his breath, and now he doesn't just look afraid. He looks terrified.

Gerard leans in. “You've seen it, haven't you? On the stairs.”

Slowly, Mikey nods. “Other places too. Fuck, I thought I was going crazy,” he says, voice raw. “What is it? Have you talked to it?”

“No. It's...weird. Like I'm separated from it. I can't even see it. But I can _feel_ it, and it's...it's not good. You shouldn't be living in this house. No one should. Ever.” Gerard pauses heavily. “Mikey...why didn't you tell them about the knife?”

“The knife?”

Gerard rolls his eyes. “The one that just _appeared_ under your pillow, remember?”

Mikey shrugs. “No one would have believed me. Frank's parents don't really...I think they mostly just pretend I'm not there.”

“So what, you're just gonna ignore it until you wake up with a fucking slit throat? Because let me tell you, something, Mikey Way. That thing would have killed Frank if I hadn't been there to push him out of the way. And I'm not going to just sit here and watch it come after you, too. I don't care what it does to me.” Gerard knows his voice is too loud, too angry, but he doesn't care. This _matters._

Mikey's lips tighten, and his eyes remain downcast, but he doesn't let go of Gerard's hands. And that's something, anyway. Eventually, he looks up at the shifting blankness around them, as if there's something to see. Maybe, for Mikey, there is.

“I have to wake up soon,” he says mournfully.

And Gerard can feel it, too. The skip. The fade. He speaks as quickly as he can, racing against time. “Mikey, listen to me. I don't know how long I'll be gone after this. I don't know...but you have to take care of yourself, okay? Anything you can think of. Take Frank and fucking _run away_ if you have to. Promise me.”

Mikey bites his lip, and maybe he's going to make that promise and maybe he isn't, but Gerard doesn't have enough time left to find out.

“I love you, Mikey. I'm sorry, I...”

And then Gerard is gone, slipping away, for what he hopes isn't the very last time.

*

Coming back doesn’t happen all at once, this time. Gerard gets glimpses here and there - Mikey talking with Frank, gesturing to the empty air around them. Mikey’s bed piling up with old library books that have strange symbols on their covers and words like “occult” and “supernatural” in their titles. Time passing. So much time, and Gerard tries with everything he has to reach out, dig in, get back where he _belongs._ Mikey needs his help. Needs him.

When it happens, it happens suddenly.

Mikey is kneeling on the floor with Frank and his mom and Stepdad Fred huddled behind him. They are surrounded by a circle of salt – Frank is clutching the box with both hands, the one with the little girl holding an umbrella on it. Mikey is chanting something under his breath in a language Gerard doesn't recognize, and around his neck something glints silver – a cross. Their mother's. Gerard would know it anywhere.

He can't see the spirit, but the stinking choking rotting feeling of it is stronger than ever, making it hard to even think. But Gerard doesn't have to think. He knows what he has to do. Maybe he's always known. And maybe it should be impossible, but it feels like the easiest thing in the world to go to Mikey and slip right inside him, right down to the deepest core of him, where he hides all his loves and his fears and his _strength,_ that strength Gerard suspects Mikey doesn't even know he has.

Sensation comes flooding in, overwhelming and strange. The rush of breath in Mikey's lungs and the ache of his knees on the floor. The heady exhilaration of adrenaline coursing through Mikey's brain. And the _color_ of the world through Mikey's eyes...how could Gerard have forgotten those colors?

But there is no time to look, to savor. Right in front of him, clear as day, he can see it. For the first time, he can see it, and he knows, somehow, in a deep, irrefutable way – he can fight it. He and Mikey together like this, forces combined? They can fight anything.

It looks like something that was once a man – here and there, the suggestion of what used to be fingers, an eye peeking out. But whatever it used to be is well and truly gone now, buried under god knows how many decades (centuries?) of rot. It's a dripping oozing disgusting _mass,_ too big, too swollen, with too many limbs. And it's coming closer.

Gerard stands, drawing himself up to Mikey's full height, and stares right back at it.

*

Afterward, when the air is clearing and he can breathe again, Gerard stares down at the floor and watches the sickly shrinking thing disappearing through the floorboards, being sucked away into nothingness where it belongs. Then he turns away, putting the thing behind him. It's over now.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the far wall, and looks for a long moment at what's not his reflection. Behind Mikey's glasses, his eyes are shining supernaturally bright. His throat is hoarse, as if he's been screaming. Maybe he has.

“Holy _shit,_ Mikey!”

Frank's parents are still on the floor, clutching each other with their eyes closed, but Frank is standing now, reaching out to grab Mikey's shoulders and grinning wider by the second.

Gerard looks down at him and swallows. Shakes his head. “I'm not Mikey,” he says.

Frank freezes, but he doesn't take his hands off Mikey's shoulders. Gerard waits and leans ever-so-slightly into the touch. _Touch._ He never appreciated it properly when he was alive. He wants Frank to keep hanging onto him like that forever.

 _“Gerard?”_ he says, finally, disbelief coloring his voice.

Gerard nods. He has no idea what to say. “Um...you should be safe now, I think. It's dead. Or...gone, or whatever. I'm pretty sure.”

“Dude,” Frank breathes. “You really are like an avenging angel! We would have been so fucking dead, holy shit. Next time you should get in my body, though. I can totally kick more ghost-ass than Mikey.”

 _Next time._ The satisfaction of victory, the novelty of having a body, a _voice_ again, the shockingly easy comfort of sharing a body with his brother...all of it fades with those two little words. Because, yeah, no point in denying it. Gerard knows.

“I wish...” he says. “I wish we could have known each other. When I was alive.”

Frank's expression falls, and Gerard wants to explain, wants to just _hang on_ for one more minute...but this is Mikey's body, and Gerard doesn't belong here. He can already feel the balance shifting, Mikey's consciousness coming to the forefront again as his own slips away. How it should be.

“Tell him I said...” Gerard starts, and then his voice is gone again, and with it all the color in the world.

*

He sees Mikey one more time, just once.

Later.

Mikey is older now. Tall. Lean. No glasses to hide behind.

There's a girl, sometimes, and when he looks at her, he smiles, and the shadows behind his eyes fade for a while.

Gerard doesn't reach, but it doesn't matter. Mikey senses him anyway, late at night when he's alone, looks right at him where he's hovering in the corner of the room.

“Gee?” he asks, the sort of question that doesn't expect an answer. Mikey smiles, a bit sadly. “I wondered if you'd ever make it back. I'm glad you did. I was hoping...I wanted to say thank you.”

There's no reason to, Mikey. You never have to thank me.

“You saved us all that night. You changed everything. Frank never would have met Ray and the guys, never would have bought his club. I never would have met Alicia. We never...” Mikey glances at the door, and his smile goes soft. “I'll never forget what you did for us, Gee.”

You're my brother. You'll always be my little brother. I'll always be here to protect you.

“I know you don't want to go. But, Gee, maybe that's what's supposed to happen. Maybe there's something else out there for you, something better. You shouldn't be stuck here watching for the rest of...forever. Go be with Mom, and Grandma. And just try to remember, I'll be there too someday, you know? When it's time. This isn't the end.”

I love you, Mikey Way.

“I love you, Gee.”

_Goodbye._

*


End file.
